Last night as I was in the zhan zhuang ‘embrace the tree’ posture, my wife walks over to me and turns her head a bit sideways. She then proceeds to correct my hand positioning. First, she adjusted my left hand as it was sticking out farther than my right. Then she adjusts my right hand a bit higher and finally, she taps me on my left shoulder. Wow.. what an eye opener.

After my standing correction a couple of years back from Chen Xiaowang, I was mainly focusing on aligning my center line, that is making sure the line formed by my nose and belly button where centered between my feet. Amazing how I was unable to note that my hands were not aligned correctly. Luckily my wife did note that my centerline was fine and my back was fine.. whew.

There is a chart in The Way of Energy that lists some sensations and things that can happen during one’s zhan zhuang. One of them is one hand being higher than the other.. yup, that’s me. Another one that I had a while back was some shaking. This was probably about 5 years ago, but I remember after a standing session one of my classmates noted that my hands were shaking. I told him I did not realize it since I had not felt the shaking and I was doing zhan zhuang with my eyes closed. Eventually, the shaking surpassed and now I just stand funny..